Nice thought provoking article about being different and “Relevant.” Again, this all ties into branding, marketing and selling. We all strive to be different and unique and in many ways we are. WebSuccessTeam

The Key to Differentiation Is Relevance

Posted by Bart Cleveland for Adage

Differentiation is something that every agency preaches to its clients. Yet most ad agencies are a commodity. Very few have a distinct personality. I have no greater fear than my agency being without a mantra — having no reason for being other than a paycheck. I realize it is a business that must make a profit, but if my agency has no personality, it is average. And to me, whether you’re flipping hamburgers or making ads, being average is worse than not being at all. Being average in our industry means your agency is a commodity that fights for clients in a price war. Sound familiar?

My partners and I continually discuss what makes us different. This is a good thing. We understand the importance of agreeing on our reason for being. But there is a more critical thing we’ve learned from these discussions. Before we can answer how our agency is different, we must know what truly constitutes being different. Read more.

All too often we get comfortable in our jobs or companies doing what we do best. But periodically these good habits need to be re-examined. In recessionary times you need to constantly reinvent yourself and try new avenues to increase your market share or profitability.

Times are a-changing. The Internet is a dynamic environment and you need to become more active in social media, online networking groups, and good old fashion hand pressing. It’s also a good idea to reassess your website by freshening it up with new content, promotions and calls to action.

Another excellent way to reach out is to actively maintain a blog and blog at least once a week on topical issues of interest for your potential customers. – Bob Speyer, Web Success Team.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 /PRNewswire/ — Following a trying period with little-to-no-growth and industry layoffs and pay cuts, legal professionals are turning to proven business development efforts to freshen their brands and generate business.

Working with law firms to help them dig out of this smoking crater, Moire Marketing Partners, a strategic branding and communications agency specializing in professional services firms, is offering some tips on how firms can position themselves for growth in the post-recession economy:

Incorporate social media into your business development efforts. Your clients, prospects and their suppliers are using it; you should strategically use it too. Leverage tools including LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to connect with prospective clients and other professionals to build your network and demonstrate your expertise.

Be a brand ambassador. Remember, you are the face of your company’s brand. Use your interactions to communicate your firm’s brand promise and support that continuously in your efforts.

Network. Relationships matter. Social media is a great way to start a conversation with a client or prospect – but don’t let it stop there. Offer to meet new and old colleagues at an upcoming industry or bar association meeting, civic event, non-profit activity or social mixer – or host your own hospitality function at your firm.

Seize the podium. Apply to be a speaker at upcoming events. If you aren’t accepted, attend anyway to get a better handle on what topics are creating buzz.

Learn from other professionals. Invest in consultants to sharpen your brand. An outside perspective can help you assess the effectiveness of your business development efforts and offer insight into what strategies would work best for your personality type.

Be active in your home and business communities. Dust off those memberships in the local chamber of commerce and non-profit organization. Get involved in industry related activities and slowly increase your profile. Read more

This article raises consumer awareness of how easily we as John Q. Public can be manipulated into thinking blogged articles are gospel and bloggers do not have hidden agendas. Bloggers do get paid and this could taint their opinions. So disclosure of financial incentives is good to be reported, but the industry should be self regulated. The government should not be involved. Ad networks can regulate itself as some industries already do. One example is a comparison shopping engine that let consumers post comments or rate a service or product like Ebay. In the end of the day, pay by credit card so you have recourse for a refund and always remember, “caveat emptor” — buyer beware! – WST

An Open Letter to Online Ad Networks

The FTC recently announced guidelines for bloggers that requires that they disclose financial interests, freebies and paid reviews. This decision is seen as a shot across the bow of pay per post networks and bloggers who are monetizing through affiliate programs. The FTC has decided that compensation is the reason bloggers choose to write about a particular topic and that readers deserve to be informed about the financial relationship. The FTC logic is simple, “As much as those bloggers who receive these gifts would like to claim this isn’t the case, freebies like free laptops, trips, or gift cards are likely to influence a writer’s opinion of a product.”

On its face, the policy is defensible. As crusaders against Virtual Blight, we applaud the intent of this decision. Anything that raises the barrier to online scams, fraud and abuse even a little bit is a good thing. The FTC provides guidelines for responsible bloggers and theoretically eliminates a couple of the perks for bloggers, but it does virtually nothing to protect against fraud.

Going after bloggers’ compensation to fight online fraud is reminiscent of the RIAA attacks on individual file sharers and is just as likely to succeed. The absurdity of the power and inertia of a government bureaucracy combating individual bloggers is only matched by the ludicrous assumption the government could ever move fast enough to keep up with professional scammers who jump from domain to domain, host to host and country to country with a few mouse clicks. Prosecution could only be effective against mainstream bloggers with an established brand that are stationary targets, but these bloggers are not the right target. Read more.

Search taxonomy is becoming very important in search engine optimization. Using a recent study, Bill goes into detail on the types of searches that are done and how to implement them in your content. Knowing how users find your business and what they are looking for can help with ad and SEO campaigns. Marketing is a key factor for any online business. If you are starting out or need to revamp your website check out our new Solopreneur Package. – WST

By: Bill Slawski

There are creative ways that a small business may use to help visitors find them online, engage those visitors and customers, and keep them coming back. The Small Business Administration has a article that describes some ways that many businesses can use to promote their business in 15 Foolproof Ideas for Promoting Your Company. The article offers ideas like holding contests, or publishing a newsletter, offering demonstrations and seminars and more. Many of those ideas can work well in an online setting.

When you create content for an ecommerce site, it also can help to think about more than just how you may present the products or goods that you offer on your pages. Many ecommerce sites on the web simply break products own into categories, and provide very little beyond a listing of those products and brief descriptions about them.

Understanding how people may search for what you have to offer can be really important, especially if you hope to have visitors find you through search engines. It can be a key to finding creative ways to bring people to your site who might be interested in what you have to offer.

Different Intents Behind Searches

It can be helpful to understand that when people search, they often have different purposes in mind. When someone from one of the major search engines writes about these different purposes, they often refer to them as “user intent.”

Some people may want to learn about a topic, or to buy something, or to learn how to do something for free. Since many visitors may arrive at a web site through a search engine, it helps to know about different types of queries that a searcher may use to find your site. So, an important way of thinking about queries is to consider the intent behind them.

A convenient way of breaking down queries into different types is described in a paper written by search engineer Andrei Broder, who classifies the intent behind queries down into navigational, transactional, and informational, in the paper A taxonomy of web search (pdf)

Informational Queries – The web is much more than just a commercial space, filled with marketing and commerce. It’s a medium where people can communicate with each other, share ideas, learn about a world of topics, find and offer advice, and explore other countries and cultures and communities. Many people who do go online with some kind of commercial intent do so to save money rather than spend it, often looking for ways to do things themselves. People who may want to buy something may be looking for information that can help them make an informed decision before they decide to make a purchase.
Navigational Queries – A navigational query is one in which a searcher is attempting to find a specific page or site that they have visited before, or have assumed likely exists on the Web. For example, if I want to visit the pages of the American Psychological Association, I might type [apa] into a search box, hoping that the top search result might be the home page for the organization. The major commercial search engines have even been trying to help people who perform navigation type queries by attempting to associate certain query terms with sites that may be ideal destinations for those queries. The search engines may even offer additional links under a listing for those sites, referred to as site links or quicklinks, which may help lead searchers to pages within a site that they may be interested in ending up at on those sites.

Transactional Queries – Transactional queries are ones in which a searcher may not have a specific site in mind, but they want to perform or complete some kind of task online, such as accessing and searching a database about a topic, being entertained interactively, downloading a video, making a purchase, or interacting with the site or others in some way. If you offer goods or services to consumers or to other businesses, you’ll want to be found by the people who are looking for what you have to offer and want to interact with you.

Clickset is a new tool that helps you keep your online identity in one convenient place. Once you sign-up you can connect with your pre-existing accounts like Google and Yahoo.

For more reading and information, here is an article from mashable.com

Cliqset Wants to Unify Your Social Identities

March 10th, 2009 | by Jennifer Van Grove

Previously hidden away behind closed doors, Cliqset, a social identity platform, is drawing back their curtains today and opening up their beta site to the public. Similar in purpose to the private beta site Chi.mp, Cliqset’s ultimate goal is to help users connect their online identities in one place so they can then safely share that online social identity with Cliqset-aware applications.

Cliqset even claims to be the last social identity you will ever need. After signing up, new Cliqset members can connect their Cliqset identity with their pre-existing Google, Plaxo, and Yahoo accounts, which means those contacts can be pulled into Cliqset and grouped into relationships. Read more.

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